from IAIS: ANDREWS WANTS McALISKEY FREED 


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ANDREWS WANTS McALISKEY FREED
11/13/97 10:53 EST

United States chairman of the Northern Ireland peace talks,
Senator Irish Foreign Affairs Minister David Andrews has
said he wants Britain to release Roisin McAliskey.
McAliskey, daughter of former Nationalist MP Bernadette
McAliskey, is being held in London on foot of an extradition
warrent from Germany for questioning over an IRA mortar
attack on a British army base in Osnabruck in June 1996.
She is now in a London psychiatric Hospital with her
five-month-old daughter Loinnir, who she gave birth to while
in custody. Civil rights campaigners and a wide range of
Irish and international politicians are demanding her
release on humanitarian grounds and because any evidence
against her has been discredited and witnesses say she was
in Northern Ireland at the time of the attack. She has been
too ill to appear at several extradition hearings.
Yesterday a new hearing was set for January 2. Following a
meeting with Roisin's mother and her solicitor Gareth Peirce
in Dublin yesterday, Andrews said the whole thrust of the
Irish government's efforts in relation to her was to have
her released. He said: "We are concerned at the humanitarian
aspects of this particular case. "There are a number of
options and we have to take account of the sensitivities in
advance of exploring these options." He said he would be
raising the matter with Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary
Mo Mowlam.


The Irish American Information Service is a non-profit
organization provding up-to-the-minute objective coverage of
news as it happens in Ireland and the North.  Please
visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.iais.org
 
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nytire-11.15.97-03:32:22-20024